No More Learning

The earth itself grows
old, and no longer bears the teeming harvests of her lusty youth.
The third book opens with the praise of Epicurus and a descrip-
tion of the peace of mind which philosophy brings. To attain this
peace we must eradicate the fear of death and hell. In seven hun-
dred lines of close reasoning, some twenty-seven formal arguments
are adduced to prove the mortality of the soul and its entire depend-
ence on bodily conditions. This long arid tract is followed by two
hundred and sixty lines of the most glorious poetry in the Latin
language: an impassioned expostulation with the puny souls who
rebel against nature's beneficent law of change, who are fain to tarry
past their hour at the banquet of existence, and idly repine that
they, whose very life is a sleep and a folding of the hands for slum-
ber, must lie down to their everlasting rest with Homer and Scipio,
Democritus and Epicurus, and all the wise and brave who have gone
before.


## p. 9306 (#322) ###########################################

9306
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
The fourth book is mainly occupied by an account of the pro-
cesses of perception, which are explained by the hypothesis that
delicate films and emanations, thrown off from bodies, penetrate the
channels of sensation. A digression vigorously argues against the
skeptical doctrine of the untrustworthiness of the senses. In optical
and other illusions, it is not the senses but the hasty inferences of
the mind that are at fault.
The poet's polemic against the argument from design in the struct-
ure of the body is famous. As Prior in his 'Alma' puts it:-
"Note here Lucretius dares to teach,
As all our youth may learn from Creech,
That eyes were made but could not view,
Nor hands embrace, nor feet pursue;
But heedless Nature did produce
The members first and then the use. "
The book closes with a realistic treatment of sleep, dreams, and
the sexual life.
The fifth book deals with astronomy, the history of the globe,
and the origins of life and civilization. The poet undertakes to prove
that the triple frame of the world had a beginning and will some
day be dissolved,— a doctrine that strongly impressed the imagina-
tions of his successors.
"Then shall Lucretius's lofty numbers die,
When earth and sea in fire and flames shall fry,"
says Ovid-in Ben Jonson's free imitation.
There is no impiety in this teaching, says Lucretius; for the world
is not a perfect divine creation, as the Stoic optimists affirm, but it is
a flawed and faulty product of accidental adaptations. The puerile
astronomical hypotheses that follow are in startling contrast with the
brilliant, vividly imaginative, and essentially correct sketch of prehis-
toric anthropology and the evolution of civilization that occupies the
last six hundred lines.
The sixth book is a sort of appendix, devoted to the explanation
of alarming or mysterious phenomena which might prove a last
refuge of superstition. The most noted passage is the description of
the plague at Athens, after Thucydides (1137–1286).
Lucretius by the very didactic severity of his theme is shut out
from the wide-spread popularity of the great dramatists and epic
poets. But in every age a select company of readers is found to
respond to at least one of the three mighty chords with which his
lyre is strung; and to cherish him either as the poet of the eman-
cipating power of human science, as the poet of nature, or as the


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TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9307
sublime and melancholy satirist of naked and essential man. He is
the poet of the pride of science, as it appeals to youthful souls in
their first intoxication with the idea of infinite impersonal nature lib-
erated from her anthropomorphic lords, and in their first passionate
revolt against the infamies of popular superstition and the smug de-
cencies of its official interpreters. This influence no erudite exposure
of his errors in detail can destroy, no progress of modern knowledge
supersede. It is true that he has no conception of strict scientific
method, or of the progressive conquest of nature by man. He affirms
that the real and apparent magnitudes of the sun are nearly the
same. He denies the possibility of the antipodes, suggests that the
stars may move in quest of fresh pastures in the flowerless fields
of heaven, believes in the spontaneous generation of worms from
manure, and has a theory to account for the fact that the lion can-
not abide the crowing of the cock. But he maintains in sonorous and
vigorously argumentative verse the infinity of the universe in space
and time, the indestructibility of matter, the plurality of worlds, the
reign of law, the possibility of a mechanical explanation of all phe-
nomena, and the ceaseless operation of the silent invisible processes
whereby the transformations of nature are wrought. He has the
fundamental conception of evolution as the "rational sequence of
the unintended," and he approaches very closely the formula of the
"survival of the fittest. " He has the rudiments of the most modern
psychological notions as to the threshold of sensation and the meas-
urement of local discrimination. He illustrates the origin of lan-
guage from the barking of dogs almost in the words of Darwin, and
describes the stages of the prehistoric life of man in phrases which
Tylor quotes with approval. Above all, he attacks with eloquent scorn
the "carpenter theory of creation," and the insipidities of optimistic.
teleologies and theodicies; and he magnificently celebrates as the
chief heroes of humanity the scientific thinkers who have revealed
the eternal laws of nature, and have liberated the human spirit from
the bondage of superstition and the chimæras of metaphysics. These
things, if they do not justify Huxley's statement that "Lucretius has
drunk deeper of the scientific spirit than any other poet of ancient
or modern times except Goethe," do at least explain why he has
always been honored as the poetic incarnation of that spirit by the
church militant of science.
But he is more than the rhetorician of science. He has all Dry-
den's skill in marshaling arguments in verse; and he manifests in
addition a peculiar blending of the poetical and scientific imagination,
which causes the vivid felicity of his illustrations of the unfamiliar
by the familiar, the unseen by the seen, to be felt by the reader as
proofs rather than as mere decorative imagery. And whether in
argument or description, his language throughout conveys a more


## p. 9308 (#324) ###########################################

9308
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
vivid reflection of the ceaseless life and movement of nature than
anything in the beautiful symbolism of Greek mythology or in the
more precise formulas of modern science. Like Shelley, he renews
the work of the mythopoeic imagination in the very act of repudiat-
ing its creations. In the magnificent opening hymn to Venus, with-
out lapsing for a line from his large, stately Roman manner, he
blends the Greek poets' allegorizing conception of love as
an all-
pervading cosmic power with an incomparably warm sensuous picture
of the breathing human passion of the amorous deity.
His repudia-
tion of the superstitious worship of the great mother of the gods, in
the second book, combines all the pomp of Milton's enumerations of
the false deities of the heathen with a deeper Wordsworthian vein of
reflection on the
"springs
Of that licentious craving in the mind
To act the God among external things. ”
-
«<
The ten lines in which he recalls and rejects the myth of Phaethon
outweigh all the labored ingenuities of the three hundred and twenty-
five lines which Ovid has devoted to the theme. When, digressing
from the phenomena of echo, he explains away the Italian peasant's
naïve faith in the fauns and goat-footed satyrs with which his fancy
peoples the shepherd's lonely walks and solitude divine," the exqui-
site verses are touched by a wistful sympathy which we associate
rather with modern and romantic than with classical poetry. And
few passages in profane literature will so nearly sustain the compari-
son with the words of the Lord answering Job out of the whirlwind
as the lines where, in the name of the grandeur of the infinite world,
Lucretius scornfully challenges the petty faith in an anthropomor-
phic God-
"Who rolls the heavens, and lifts and lays the deep,
Yet loves and hates with mortal hates and loves. "
This quickening spirit of imagination constrains him, despite his
theories, to animate Nature too in all her parts and processes. He
makes us aware of life, motion, growth everywhere. In the atoms that
weave their everlasting dance like motes in the summer sun; in the
shining Ether that clips the world in his greedy embrace; in the war
of the elements, - the winds eagerly striving to dry up all the waters,
while the waters are confident that they will sooner drown the world;
in the brook plashing down the mountain-side and summoning from
afar by its clear murmurings the thirsty tribes of brutes, or delivering
the filtered tribute of the woodland to the ocean, there to be sucked
up by the sun and so precipitated again by Father Ether into the
lap of Mother Earth, who thence bears on her bounteous breast the
smiling harvests and the frisking flocks; in the life of man climbing


## p. 9309 (#325) ###########################################

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9309
ever to maturity, only to decline from life's topmost stair as the vital
forces fail under the ceaseless rain of hostile atoms impingent from
without. By virtue of this imaginative vision, and this sense of
Nature's omnipresent life, she becomes for him a personal, guiding,
artistic power,- Nature that sits at the helm, Nature manifold in
works, a being far more nearly akin to the immanent Platonic world-
soul than to the mathematical sum of colorless Democritean atoms
which his theory would make her. "As a poet," said Goethe, "I am
a Pantheist;" and despite his nominal allegiance to atomism, the po-
etry of Lucretius is in spirit pantheistic. It is the "lower pantheism »
half spiritualized by an intense feeling for the vital unity of nature,
rather than the "higher pantheism" which sees in nature only the
symbol and garment of God. But in imaginative effect it is the poetic
pantheism of Bruno, Shelley, Swinburne,-nay, of Wordsworth him-
self in Tintern Abbey. ' And to this is due much of his attraction
for many of the finest minds of the Renaissance and of our own time.
But Lucretius is the poet of nature in a still more special sense.
Lowell truly observes that "there is obscurely in him an almost
Wordsworthian" quality. Like Wordsworth, he complains of the "film
of familiarity" in consequence of which we have eyes and see not;
and he marvels that we can be so deadened by custom to the beauty
of the starry heavens, that from satiety of the sight no man deigns to
look up to the lucid quarters of the sky. And he himself notes not
only the grander phenomena of nature, but her subtler aspects and
minor solicitations of our senses, on which modern poetry is wont to
dwell. He has marked with Coleridge—
"Those thin clouds above in flakes and bars
That give away their motion to the stars. "
He has observed with Bryant and Wordsworth how distance turns the
foaming flood or the grazing flock to a motionless patch of white
upon the landscape. He has seen all heaven in a globe of dew, with
Shelley. Many of his lines, like those of Tennyson, come back to the
lover of nature on his walks, as the inevitable and only expression of
what the eye beholds. "When Tennyson went with me to Harwich,"
says Fitzgerald, "I was pointing out an old collier rolling to the tune
of Trudit agens magnam magno molimine navem >» (With mighty
endeavor the wind drives onward the mighty vessel). And the same
critic characterizes as a noble Poussin landscape the picture of sum-
mer belts of vine and olive (v. 1370-8), which Wordsworth quotes in
his description of the scenery of the English lakes.
To other readers Lucretius will appeal rather as the poet of man.
"Satire is wholly ours," said the Roman critic. And Lucretius is a
true Roman in that he is a superb rhetorical satirist—a satirist not
of men but of essential man. The vanity of our luxury, the tedium


## p. 9310 (#326) ###########################################

9310
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
of fantastic idleness, the doubtful benefits of our over-refined and
sophisticated civilization, the futility of the Sisyphean labors of ambi-
tion, our idle terrors of death, the grotesque and horrible absurdity of
the superstitions we dignify by the name of religion, the disenchant-
ment that lurks behind the stage illusions of passion, the insatiate
thirst for change and happiness inseparable from our very being,-
what license of realistic satire could impress these things upon us as
we feel them under the spell of that severe and melancholy elo-
quence, which reveals our puny life stripped of its conventional dis-
guises and shivering on the shores of infinite existence, the sport of
the elemental forces of the world?
"Poor little life-
Crowned with a flower or two, and there an end. ”
But his is not the soul-blighting satire that has no pity in it. "Poor
hapless mortals" is his standing Homeric phrase for mankind, wan-
dering blindly in the mazes of ignorance, and ridden by superstition,
ennui, ambition, and false ideals of happiness. But he does not
therefore preach mere cynicism and despair. "The sober majesties
of settled sweet Epicurean life" are accessible to all; some few may
attain the passionless calm of "students in their pensive citadels";
and the supreme spirits who pass the flaming bounds of space and
time and bring back to mankind the tablets of nature's everlasting
laws, lift humanity to the level of the gods. And the dignity with
which his majestic melancholy invests suffering and death, by view-
ing them sub specie æternitatis as manifestations of the eternal laws of
life, does more to rob them of their sting for some minds than the
affected cheerfulness of formal optimism protesting overmuch. Fred-
erick the Great is not the only strenuous spirit that has turned to
the third book of the 'De Rerum Natura' for solace and calm.
A poet's style must be studied in the original. Lucretius's models
were, among the Latins, Ennius; among the Greeks, the older poets,
Homer, Empedocles, Euripides, rather than the artificial Alexandrians
who were in favor among his contemporaries. His sincerity, earnest-
ness, and strength, his enthusiastic faith in his teachings, and his
keen delight in the labor of "shutting reasons up in rhythm and
Heliconian honey in living words," enlists the reader's attention from
the start. And the poet retains it with imperious grasp as he urges
on the serried files of his verse over the vast barren spaces of his
theme, like Roman soldiers marching on the great white imperial
roads that disdain to deviate for mountain or morass.
"Some find him tedious, others think him lame;
But if he lags, his subject is to blame.
Rough weary roads through barren wilds he tried,
Yet still he marches with true Roman pride. "— ARMSTrong.


## p. 9311 (#327) ###########################################

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9311
He is not yet master of the intricate harmony and the dying fall
of the Virgilian poetic period, nor of the limpid felicity of Ovid; but
his single mighty lines, weighted with sonorous archaic diction, and
pointed with alliteration, assonance, and antithesis, possess an incom-
parable energy. They strike upon the sense like huge lances hurled
quivering to the mark. The effect can hardly be reproduced in our
monosyllabic English.
"When death immortal stays the mortal pulse. "
"Great Scipio's son,
Terror of Carthage, thunderbolt of war. »
"He passed beyond
The unsurmounted fires that wall the world. "
"The parched earth rocks beneath the thunder-stroke,
And threatening peals run rattling o'er the sky. "
"Hand on the torch of life in fiery race. »
"Awe from above to tame the thankless hearts
And graceless spirits of the godless mob. "
"When Rome and Carthage clashed in shock of war. "
"The lion's wrath that bursts his mighty heart. "
"Black shapes of Terror lowering from the clouds. »
"All beasts that range on all the hills o' the world. "
"Here waste Charybdis yawns, and rumbling Ætna
Threatens to re-collect her wrathful fires. "
His influence is to be measured by the quality rather than by the
number of his readers.
He «
was a poet's poet among the ancients,
and is a scholar's poet among the moderns. " Virgil, Horace, and
Manilius were his pupils in the art of writing Latin verse. Ovid, Pro-
pertius, Martial, Statius allude to him with respectful awe.
He was a
chief source of inspiration to Bruno, and many of the rationalizing
pantheists of the Renaissance. Montaigne quotes him on almost every
page, and criticizes his fine passages with discriminating enthusiasm.
Spenser and Milton know him well and often imitate him. Through
Gassendi and Molière he became the standard-bearer of rationalism in
the conservative and formal seventeenth century; meriting the honor
of refutation by a cardinal, and the coupling of his name with that
of Hobbes in denunciation by Nahum Tate. This naturally insured
him the enthusiastic admiration of Voltaire and of the great Encyclo-
pedists. The famous prosopopoeia of Nature in the 'Système de la
Nature' was suggested by a passage in the third book. Dryden
translated the proem of the first book; and Creech's translation made


## p. 9312 (#328) ###########################################

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9312
him familiar to the minor writers of the eighteenth century, as fre-
quent allusions prove. And the nineteenth century, which cares noth-
ing for his polemical significance, is recalled to an appreciation of his
higher poetic qualities by the admiration of André Chénier, Goethe,
Sully Prud'homme, Sainte-Beuve, Schérer, Shelley, Wordsworth, Tenny-
son, Swinburne, George Eliot, Fitzgerald, Symonds, and a host of
minor essayists.
Munro's masterly edition and translation meets all the needs of
the scholar. Kelsey's convenient school edition is much used in
American colleges. Mallock's volume in Blackwood's Ancient Clas-
sics' offers a useful but unsympathetic summary, with specimens of
a translation in Spenserian verse. Martha's 'Poème de Lucréce' is
eloquent and interesting. Sellar's exhaustive chapters in the Roman
Poets of the Republic' are diffuse but readable. There is an enthu-
siastic essay in Symonds's 'Italian Byways,' and there are short
studies by Saint-Beuve and Schérer.
Paul away
ел
SPENSER'S IMITATION OF THE
OPENING LINES OF THE NATURE OF THINGS›
From The Fairy Queen'
GR
REAT Venus! queen of beauty and of grace,
The joy of gods and men, that under sky
Dost fairest shine, and most adorn thy place;
That with thy smiling look dost pacify
The raging seas, and mak'st the storms to fly:
Thee, goddess, thee the winds, the clouds do fear;
And when thou spread'st thy mantle forth on high,
The waters play, and pleasant lands appear,
And heavens laugh, and all the world shows joyous cheer.
Then doth the dædale earth throw forth to thee
Out of her fruitful lap abundant flowers;
And then all living wights, soon as they see
The spring break forth out of his lusty bowers,
They all do learn to play the paramours;
First do the merry birds, thy pretty pages,
Privily pricked with thy lustful powers,
Chirp loud to thee out of their leafy cages,
And thee their mother call to cool their kindly rages.


## p. 9313 (#329) ###########################################

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
Then do the savage beasts begin to play
Their pleasant frisks, and loathe their wonted food;
The lions roar; the tigers loudly bray;
The raging bulls re-bellow through the wood,
And breaking forth, dare tempt the deepest flood
To come where thou dost draw them with desire.
So all things else, that nourish vital blood,
Soon as with fury thou dost them inspire,
In generation seek to quench their inward fire.
So all the world by thee at first was made,
And daily yet thou dost the same repair:
Ne ought on earth that merry is and glad,
Ne ought on earth that lovely is and fair,
But thou the same for pleasure didst prepare.
Thou art the root of all that joyous is:
Great god of men and women, queen of the air,
Mother of laughter, and well-spring of bliss,
O grant that of my love at last I may not miss!
9313
INVOCATION TO VENUS
[This and the following versions are all taken from the accurate and scholarly
prose version of Professor Munro. ]
SING
INCE thou then art sole mistress of the nature of things, and
without thee nothing rises up into the divine borders of
light, nothing grows to be glad or lovely, fain would I have
thee for a helpmate in writing the verses which I essay to pen
on the nature of things for our own son of the Memmii; whom
thou, goddess, hast willed to have no peer, rich as he ever is in
every grace. Wherefore all the more, O lady, lend my lays an
ever-living charm. Cause meanwhile the savage works of war to
be lulled to rest throughout all seas and lands; for thou alone
canst bless mankind with calm peace, seeing that Mavors, lord of
battle, controls the savage works of war,— Mavors, who often
flings himself into thy lap quite vanquished by the never-healing
wound of love; and then, with upturned face and shapely neck
thrown back, feeds with love his greedy sight, gazing, goddess,
open-mouthed on thee. Then, lady, pour from thy lips sweet dis-
course, asking, glorious dame, gentle peace for the Romans.
XVI-583


## p. 9314 (#330) ###########################################

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9314
ON THE EVIL OF SUPERSTITION
WHE
THEN human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth,
crushed down under the weight of religion, who showed
her head from the quarters of heaven with hideous aspect
lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece ventured first to lift up
his mortal eyes to her face and first to withstand her to her face.
Him neither story of gods nor thunderbolts nor heaven with
threatening roar could quell: they only chafed the more the eager
courage of his soul, filling him with desire to be the first to
burst the fast bars of nature's portals. Therefore the living force
of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the flaming
walls of the world, and traversed throughout in mind and spirit
the immeasurable universe; whence he returns, a conqueror, to
tell us what can, what cannot come into being; in short, on what
principle each thing has its powers defined, its deep-set boundary
mark. Therefore religion is put under foot and trampled upon
in turn; us his victory brings level with heaven.
This is what I fear herein, lest haply you should fancy
that you are entering on unholy grounds of reason, and treading
the path of sin; whereas on the contrary, often and often that
very religion has given birth to sinful and unholy deeds. Thus,
in Aulis, the chosen chieftains of the Danai, foremost of men,
foully polluted with Iphianassa's blood the altar of the Trivian.
maid. Soon as the fillet encircling her maiden tresses shed itself
in equal lengths adown each cheek, and soon as she saw her
father standing sorrowful before the altars, and beside him the
ministering priests hiding the knife, and her countrymen at sight
of her shedding tears, speechless in terror she dropped down on
her knees and sank to the ground. Nor aught in such a moment
could it avail the luckless girl that she had first bestowed the
name of father on the king. For lifted up in the hands of the
men she was carried shivering to the altars, not after due per-
formance of the customary rites to be escorted by the clear-
ringing bridal song, but in the very season of marriage, stainless
maid 'mid the stain of blood, to fall a sad victim by the sacrifi-
cing stroke of a father, that thus a happy and prosperous depart-
ure might be granted to the fleet. So great the evils to which
religion could prompt!


## p. 9315 (#331) ###########################################

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9315
THE FOOLISHNESS OF LUXURY
From Book Second
I'
T IS sweet, when on the great sea the winds trouble its waters,
to behold from land another's deep distress; not that it is a
pleasure and delight that any should be afflicted, but because
it is sweet to see from what evils you are yourself exempt. It
is sweet, also, to look upon the mighty struggles of war arrayed
along the plains without sharing yourself in the danger. But
nothing is more welcome than to hold the lofty and serene posi-
tions well fortified by the learning of the wise, from which you
may look down upon others and see them wandering all abroad.
and going astray in their search for the path of life,- see the
contest among them of intellect, the rivalry of birth, the striving
night and day with surpassing effort to struggle up to the sum-
mit of power and be masters of the world. Oh, miserable minds
of men! oh, blinded breasts! in what darkness of life and in
how great dangers is passed this term of life, whatever its dura-
tion! Not choose to see that nature craves for herself no more
than this, that pain hold aloof from the body, and she in mind.
enjoy a feeling of pleasure exempt from care and fear? Therefore
we see that for the body's nature few things are needed at all;
such and such only as take away pain. Nay, though more grate-
fully at times they can minister to us many choice delights,
nature for her part wants them not, when there are no golden
images of youths through the house holding in their right hands
flaming lamps for supply of light to the nightly banquet, when
the house shines not with silver nor glitters with gold, nor do
the paneled and gilded roofs re-echo to the harp; what time,
though these things be wanting, they spread themselves in
groups on the soft grass beside a stream of water, under the
boughs of a high tree, and at no great cost pleasantly refresh
their bodies, above all when the weather smiles and the seasons
of the year besprinkle the green grass with flowers. Nor do hot
fevers sooner quit the body if you toss about on pictured tapes-
try and blushing purple, than if you must lie under a poor man's
blanket. Wherefore, since treasures avail nothing in respect of
our body nor birth nor the glory of kingly power, advancing
farther you must hold that they are of no service to the mind as
well.


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9316
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
THE NOTHINGNESS OF DEATH
DR
EATH therefore to us is nothing, concerns us not a jot, since
the nature of the mind is proved to be mortal. And as in
time gone by we felt no distress, when the Pœni [Cartha-
ginians] from all sides came together to do battle, and all things
shaken by war's troublous uproar shuddered and quaked beneath
high heaven, and mortal men were in doubt which of the two
peoples it should be to whose empire all must fall by sea and
land alike; thus when we shall be no more, when there shall
have been a separation of body and soul, out of both of which
we are each formed into a single being,-to us, you may be
sure, who then shall be no more, nothing whatever can happen
to excite sensation, not if earth shall be mingled with sea and
sea with heaven. And even supposing the nature of the mind
and power of the soul do feel, after they have been severed from
our body, yet that is nothing to us, who by the binding tie of
marriage between body and soul are formed each into one single
being. And if time should gather up our matter after our death
and put it once more into the position in which it now is, and
the light of life be given to us again, this result even would
concern us not at all, when the chain of our self-consciousness
has once been snapped asunder.
THE END OF ALL
F, JUST as they are seen to feel that a load is on their mind
which wears them out with its pressure, men might appre-
hend from what causes too it is produced, and whence such
a pile, if I may say so, of ill lies on their breast,-they would
not spend their life as we see them now for the most part do,
not knowing any one of them what he wishes, and wanting ever
change of place as though he might lay his burden down. The
man who is sick of home often issues forth from his large man-
sion, and as suddenly comes back to it, finding as he does that
he is no better off abroad. He races to his country-house, driv-
ing his jennets in headlong haste, as if hurrying to bring help
to a house on fire: he yawns the moment he has reached the
door of his house, or sinks heavily into sleep and seeks forget-
fulness, or even in haste goes back again to town.
In this way


## p. 9317 (#333) ###########################################

TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
9317
each man flies from himself (but self, from whom, as you may
be sure is commonly the case, he cannot escape, clings to him
in his own despite); hates too himself, because he is sick and
knows not the cause of the malady; - for if he could rightly see
into this, relinquishing all else, each man would study to learn
the nature of things; since the point at stake is the condition
for eternity, not for one hour,-in which mortals have to pass
all the time which remains for them to expect after death.
Once more, what evil lust of life is this which constrains us
with such force to be so mightily troubled in doubts and dan-
gers? A sure term of life is fixed for mortals, and death cannot
be shunned, but meet it we must. Moreover, we are ever en-
gaged, ever involved in the same pursuits, and no new pleasure
is struck out by living on: but whilst what we crave is wanting,
it seems to transcend all the rest; then, when it has been gotten,
we crave something else, and ever does the same thirst of life
possess us, as we gape for it open-mouthed. Quite doubtful it is
what fortune the future will carry with it, or what chance will
bring us, or what end is at hand. Nor, by prolonging life, do
we take one tittle from the time passed in death, nor can we
fret anything away, whereby we may haply be a less long time
in the condition of the dead. Therefore you may complete as
many generations as you please during your life: none the less,
however, will that everlasting death await you; and for no less.
long a time will he be no more in being, who, beginning with
to-day, has ended his life, than the man who has died many
months and years ago.
_____________________
THE SPIRITUALITY OF MATERIAL THINGS
From Book Sixth
IN
THE first place, from all things whatsoever which we see,
there must incessantly stream and be discharged and scat-
tered abroad such bodies as strike the eyes and provoke
vision. Smells too incessantly stream from certain things; as does
cold from rivers, heat from the sun, spray from the waves of the
sea, that enter into walls near the shore. Various sounds, too,
cease not to stream through the air. Then a moist salt flavor often
comes into the mouth, when we are moving about beside the sea;
and when we look on at the mixing of a decoction of wormwood,


## p. 9318 (#334) ###########################################

9318
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
its bitterness affects us. In such a constant stream from all
things the several qualities of things are carried and are trans-
mitted in all directions round: and no delay, no respite in the
flow, is ever granted; since we constantly have feeling, and may
at any time see, smell, and hear the sound of everything.
And now I will state once again how rare a body all things
have; a question made clear in the first part of my poem also,
although the knowledge of this is of importance in regard to
many things, above all in regard to this very question which I
am coming to discuss. At the very outset it is necessary to
establish that nothing comes under sense save body mixed with
void. For instance: in caves, rocks overhead sweat with moisture
and trickle down in oozing drops. Sweat, too, oozes out from our
whole body; the beard grows, and hairs over all our limbs and
frame. Food is distributed through all the veins, gives increase
and nourishment to the very extremities and nails. We feel too
cold and heat pass through brass, we feel them pass through gold
and silver, when we hold cups. Again, voices fly through the
stone partitions of houses: smell passes through, and cold, and
the heat of fire which is wont ay to pierce even the strength of
iron, where the Gaulish cuirass girds the body round. And when
a storm has gathered in earth and heaven, and when along with
it the influence of disease makes its way in from without, they
both withdraw respectively to heaven and earth and there work
their wills, since there is nothing at all that is not of a rare
texture of body.
Furthermore, all bodies whatever which are discharged from
things are not qualified to excite the same sensations, nor are
adapted for all things alike. The sun for instance bakes and
dries up the earth, but thaws ice, and forces the snows piled up
high on the high hills to melt away beneath his rays; wax again
turns to liquid when placed within reach of his heat. Fire also
melts brass and fuses gold, but shrivels up and draws together
hides and flesh.


## p. 9318 (#335) ###########################################



## p. 9318 (#336) ###########################################


MARTIN LUTHER


## p. 9318 (#337) ###########################################

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## p. 9318 (#338) ###########################################


MARTIN LUTHER
Se


## p. 9319 (#339) ###########################################

9319
LUTHER
(1483-1546)
BY CHESTER D. HARTRANFT
HE transition from the mediæval to the modern world was not
at all violent, although we persist in making the lines of
demarcation strangely sharp and abrupt. The forces that
produced the changes were not all generated at once, nor did they
combine in any visible contemporary or sequential unity. They were
at first independent, and had been evolved by many unrelated, pent-
up thoughts and far-removed energies. The fact of the fusion of all
these elements was first discernible in the effects produced; gradually
the higher principle became patent enough, however discordant and
undesigned the human effort seemed to be; and at last they mingled
in an unbroken resultant. Distinctly greater than the modifications
produced in politics, literature, economics, and commerce by the cur-
rents of the time, was that introduced into religion. During centuries
had the desire for freedom, simplicity, and equality sought expression.
Individuals and orders had labored for these in extremest sacrifice
within the very heart of the medieval church. The Separatist frater-
nities, which had transmitted their beliefs and aspirations from one age
to another, now suddenly found the door open. One superior voice
gave utterance to that blended longing. Martin Luther felt within
himself the ancient ferment, and struggled experimentally to meet
the spiritual impulse and need of his day. Those primitive truths,
the universal priesthood of believers, the right and responsibility
of the individual to think and answer for himself, the immediacy
of Divine authority, the direct union with God, the overshadowing
superiority of the spiritual community of saints, were the themes.
which had been agitated all along; but which he discussed afresh,
and sought to establish not only as concepts but as realities. He
compelled their recognition for all time. The revived ideas became
the basis of a new order in society and in the State, as well as in
the church. They infused the spirit of progress along noble lines,
and instituted endless controversies in the spheres of literature, edu-
cation, discovery, and economics. None of these realms can ever
rest: they must ever search after the ideal underlying these truths,
which demand universal recognition and practice. They necessitated


## p. 9320 (#340) ###########################################

9320
LUTHER
continuous growth from the lower to the higher, and violent revolu-
tion must ensue where that change is arrested.
It was not without significance that Luther was of peasant origin
(born November 10th, 1483); that he was bred under severe home disci-
pline, against which his sensitive nature revolted; that his academic
training was in the central schools of Eisleben, Magdeburg, and
Eisenach; that he was familiar with the poverty of student life. The
University of Erfurt had felt the breath of the new learning, and
was already a pioneer of humanism. It gave him his degrees in the
liberal arts and philosophy. Hardly had he begun his legal studies.
before his religious sentiment, accentuated by a series of external
experiences, led him to become a monk of the Augustinian order, in
which Von Staupitz was steadily restoring the ancient regimen. Now
began his studies in theology, his contact with the Bible, and those
spiritual agonies which no official advancement into the priesthood,
or teaching chair, could quiet or satisfy. The solution thereof, how-
ever, was found in the simple faith of and in Christ. The journey to
Rome was of immense practical importance, for it destroyed many
illusions.
His call to Wittenberg and final settlement there, after a tempo-
rary return to Erfurt, gave him not only authority in his order, but
entrance into the office of preacher, exegete, lecturer, and author.
Here he found his way to a divine life based purely on the Scriptures.
From the controversy concerning indulgences, faith, and good works,
and after fruitless efforts to win him back, he came to the disputa-
tion at Leipzig to find there the inevitable logic of the movement to
a final rupture with the medieval church. At the Diet of Worms
that secession became fixed and political. From this time on there
was urgency not only for destructive criticism, but for the recon-
struction of Christendom upon the foundation of the spiritual experi-
ences, generated and certified by Scriptural authority. In the quiet
retreat of the Wartburg, the thought of this rebuilding possessed
him. Among many labors he occupied himself mainly with the
translation of the New Testament. He finally gave the Bible to his
people in a regenerated tongue.
But the unchained thoughts of the day refused to be held in check.
For some men the conservative method of reform was too slow. The
incursion of radicals, particularly at Wittenberg, led to his voluntary
return, and by the simple weight of his personality the iconoclastic
movement was for the most part repressed in that centre. The social
revolution inaugurated by the peasants, involving many noble prin-
ciples and aims, met with his most violent hostility because it had
resorted to the sword. To his mind the juncture of battle was not a
time for nice discriminations and balancings. Nor did the efforts at


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LUTHER
9321
political union on the part of those who adopted his views receive
any ardent co-operation from him. For a long time he resisted all
thought of even armed defense against hypothetical imperial suppres-
sion. Nor would he affiliate with divergent religious standpoints of
the Reformation, so as to bring all the moderates into a compromise,
in order to widen the Torgau and Smalkald leagues. The Diet of
Augsburg, 1530, witnessed a united public, and subscribed confession
with its Apology, on the part of the princes and their represent-
atives who had embraced the Lutheran ideas. Gradually the long
agitated purpose of an appeal to a general council was also surren-
dered by him. He softened in some degree towards the formula by
which Bucer sought to interpret the Lord's Supper, so that the Wit-
tenberg Concord might become a basis of union.
Among the reconstructive movements were the propagation of his
views in many of the German States, the visitation of the churches,
provision for education in the new spirit, the formulation of ecclesi-
astical polity and worship, and the raising of funds for the support
of ministry, parishes, and benevolent institutions. His final breach
with monasticism had been certified by his marriage and the crea-
tion of a beautiful home life, in which he exercised a hospitality
that often overtaxed his resources and the willing heart of his wife.
Relatives, students, celebrities from all lands were at his table. Some
of his devoted admirers have preserved to us his talks upon leading
themes and persons. He was the victim of almost uninterrupted
bodily suffering, which accentuated his mental and spiritual conflicts;
nor did these tend to diminish the harshness and coarseness of his
polemics. Sweet-tempered at home and in his personal intercourse
with men, he let go his fiercest passions against those adversaries
who were worthy of his steel, or he flooded lesser minds with a
deluge of satire and proverbs. He was busy with his pen after he
had to restrict his teaching and lecturing. In the larger efforts at
reunion with the mediæval church, whether by conference or by
council, he of course could take no personal part, and indeed showed
little practical sympathy with them. He had gathered about him a
body of most able coadjutors, whose hearts he had touched. Spala-
tin, Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, Cruciger, Justus, Jonas, Eber, and
others were master minds of whose careers he was the shaping
genius; although as a rule he did not seek to exercise any repressive
influence upon their liberty of thought and action. His last letters
to his wife were as humorous and beautiful as ever. He died in the
town of his birth, February 18th, 1546, while on a mission to reconcile
the Counts Albrecht and Gebhard von Mansfeldt. No man ever re-
ceived more generous testimony to his worth than did Luther as he
was borne to his rest.


## p. 9322 (#342) ###########################################

9322
LUTHER
His was an extraordinary personality. No one could escape the
attraction of his eye or speech. His mighty will conquered his phys-
ical ailments. Few men of history have been so prolific in authorship
and correspondence. He had a side for Æsop and Terence. He had
an ample culture in which the old and the new streams commingled;
while it had not the minuteness and polish of the classic models
affected by Erasmus and Melanchthon, it was pervaded with an essen-
tially original spirit which vivified and deepened every sentence that
he wrote or uttered. This culture was also very broad, and sought
invigoration and growth from most of the fresher sources of his time;
but especially drew from the perennial fountains of the people's
thought and life. He was a man of and for the people; and yet his
works instructed and stimulated the wisest and noblest of his con-
temporaries. He was full of cheer and humor, and these kept his
style sparkling and vivid. Tenderness, wrath, joy, sorrow, were always
commingled. Few whom he had charmed-and he drew to him the
most of men young and old-could be repelled by even the extremes
of his vehemence, amounting sometimes to arrogant brutality. Whom
he once loved he seldom forgot. Two widely divergent dispositions
were those of Luther and Melanchthon. When his dear Philip proved
too pliant, or slowly drifted to another principle of theology, the
magnanimity of the lion was not violently disturbed. Even the most
advanced spirits readily acknowledged their debt to the great Doctor.
His character had eminently heroic qualities, which he manifested
in his obedience to the pursuit of truth, in spite of halting and desert-
ing friends: in his attitude at Worms; in relieving his princes of all
responsibility for him; in his simple leaning upon the protection of
God; in his persistent residence at Wittenberg during its frequent
visitations by plagues; in his handling of king and princes,- Henry
VIII. , Duke George, and Duke Henry, -as he did ordinary mortals.
His sublime courage and independence have made him the idol of
almost the entire church, and have prevented a true analysis of his
character, and the acknowledgment of serious defects in his judgment
and conduct.
The salient power of his movement lies in the fact that his entire
conception of truth and duty was the result of inward struggle, con-
viction, and experience. The conscience thus educated was impera-
tive. Step by step he won his way to conclusions, until he attained
a rich understanding and appreciation of Jesus Christ as Son of man,
Son of God, and Savior of the world. He spoke from his own heart:
no wonder that he could appeal persuasively to the hearts of men.
Each process
at Erfurt, Wittenberg, Leipzig, Worms, Coburg - added
a new stone to the temple of his life. The entire man underwent a
revolution: body, soul, and spirit, were devoted singly and unitedly to


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LUTHER
9323
the one end. He sought to permeate all life with a higher life, of
which certain truths were the expression.
It could not but be, that there would occur contradictions of him-
self both in speech and conduct during the various stages of his
career. A deal of the earlier ideality disappears in the fierceness of
later disputes, and in the irresponsiveness of human nature. Some
features of the purer spirituality which he first inculcated are
obscured and almost obliterated, when he failed to discover any sub-
stantial sensibility in the students, ministers, lawyers, citizens, and
peasants about him. He practically vacated many points of liberty
and equality as he came to organize those who professed adhesion to
his principles.
He viewed his work as peculiarly that of a prophet. This was
indeed an idea common to reformers of every period; but with him
it was not a weak echo of the Old Testament, or an identification
with any one of the witnesses of the Apocalypse. He was a real Vox
Clamans, inspired by the Holy Spirit and by the existing conditions
of that church which he regarded as anti-Christ, by the claims of
society and by the confusions of State. Naturally this conception of
his call grew into a certain arrogance and dictatorship; for it carried
with it the feeling of finality. This accounts for his unbending hos-
tility to every opinion or interpretation that was not in accord with
what he deemed must be true. Hence the bitter violence of his let-
ters and treatises against such typical men as Zwingli and Schwenck-
feld; and his resistance to every attempt, save one, to bring upon a
single platform the various groups of Protestants. It was this lofty
spiritual egoism which made him turn from humanism as an ultimate
source of renovation. This impelled him to draw swords with Eras-
mus; this made him refuse the political expedients of the knights as
well as the peasants. Nor would he allow his own Elector, Frederic
John or John Frederic, to dictate to him the terms and bounds of
his duty; not even in cases which involved the most delicate rela-
tions, social and political. His scorn was boundless at every sugges-
tion of surrender or silence.
His influence upon literature was greater than that of any other
man of his time: for he did not seek to revive classic models after
the method of humanism in its worship of form, nor to use the dead
languages as vehicles for the best thought; but endeavored to spirit-
ualize the Renaissance itself, and to build up his vernacular into a
strong, fertile, and beautiful language. He distinctly says that he
delved into the colloquial patois, into the Saxon official speech (which
had a sort of first place), into proverbs, and into the folk literature,
to construct out of these sources, under the leadership of the Saxon,
one popular, technical, and literary tongue. He laid the basis thereby


## p. 9324 (#344) ###########################################

9324
LUTHER
for the splendid literature of Germany, which not even the classical
or French affectations could destroy. It is not easy to overestimate
the creative influence on literature of Luther's translation of the Bible.
Hardly less potent was his influence in baptizing music and song
with the new spirit; for he had a genuine artistic instinct, if little of
technical ability. It is no wonder, therefore, that we find him reno-
vating education in all its grades; and with such a radical conception
of its value, comprehensiveness, and method as not even Melanchthon
attained unto.
The infusion of his principles touched society and the State in
ways that he little imagined. He was a devoted patriot, and longed
to lift the German people out of their vices, and to remove the occas-
ion for that contempt with which other nationalities regarded them.
It was by very slow degrees, and in the end after all somewhat
hazily, that the thought of the German nation as greater than the
Holy Roman German Empire gained ground in his mind. It was long
before his worshipful nature could read Charles V. in his true charac-
teristics. The right of defense was denied by him until he could
look upon the Emperor as a tool of the Pope. But the upheavals of
the times produced by his single-hearted fight for gospel truth, slowly
compelled a recognition of the independence of the States, and the
claims of some kind of federation. It could not be otherwise than
that the religious liberty taught by Luther should eventuate in po-
litical freedom and constitutional law; although he himself all too
frequently forgot his own teaching, in his treatment of Sacramenta-
rians, Anabaptists, and Jews. He too, like all original minds, built
better than he knew. It has been the privilege of but few to initi-
ate such penetrative and comprehensive ideas with their correspond-
ing organizations for the regeneration of our race.
Chester D. Hartrangt.


## p. 9325 (#345) ###########################################

LUTHER
9325
TO THE CHRISTIAN NOBLES OF THE GERMAN NATION
ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN BODY
[Introductory address to Nikolaus von Amsdorf, Licentiate of the Holy
Scriptures, and Canon of Wittenberg. ]
FIR
IRST of all, may the grace and peace of God be with you, my
honored, reverend, and dear sir and friend.
The time for keeping silence has gone by, and the time
for speaking has come, as the Preacher says. According to our
agreement, I have arranged some compositions which have ref-
erence to the improvement of the Christian body, in order to
present them to the Christian nobles of the German nation, in
the hope that God would help his church through the laity; since
the ministry, which should rather have seen to it, has become
entirely indifferent. I send the complete essay to your Rever-
ence, for your judgment, and for your correction when you find
this necessary.
I know well that I shall not escape the censure
of overestimating myself, in that I, despised and forsaken man
that I am, dare to address such high and great people of rank
upon such important and supreme themes; as if there were
no other person in the world, save Dr. Luther, to protect the
Christian body and to give advice to people of such exalted
intelligence.
I will not attempt any defense: let who will, blame me. Per-
haps I owe my God and the world one more folly. I have now
resolved to pay it honestly, if I can, and to become court fool for
once. If I do not succeed, I have at least secured one advantage:
nobody need buy me a cap, nor shave my crown. But it is a
question, which of the two is going to fasten the bells on the
other. I must fulfill the proverb, "Whatever the world has to do,
a monk must be by, even if he has to be added as a picture. ”
Surely a fool has frequently spoken wisely, and often completely
fooled wise people; as Paul says, "If any man be wise in this
world, let him become a fool that he may be wise. "
Further, since I am not only a fool, but a sworn Doctor of
the Holy Scriptures, I am glad to have the opportunity to fulfill
my oath, just in the manner of such fools. I pray you to apolo-
gize for me among men of moderate intelligence, for I do not
know how to merit the favor and the grace of those who are
top-lofty in understanding: I have indeed often striven for this


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9326
LUTHER
grace and favor, but from now on I neither crave
esteem them.
God help us to seek not our own honor, but his only. Amen.
At Wittenberg, in the Convent of the Augustines, on St. John
the Baptist's eve, in the year 1520.
nor do I
ON THE LIBERTY OF THE CHRISTIAN
THA
HAT we may thoroughly comprehend what a Christian is, and
how it stands with the liberty which Christ has acquired
for and given to him, whereof St. Paul writes much, I set
down here these two conclusions:-
A Christian is a free master of all things and subject to no
one.
A Christian is a bond-servant of all things and subject to
everybody.
These two conclusions are clear. St. Paul (1 Cor. ix. 19):
"For though I was free from all men, I brought myself under
bondage to all, that I might gain the more; " further (Rom. xiii.
8): "Owe no man anything, save to love one another. " But love
is a servant, and is subject to whom it loves. Thus of Christ
(Gal. iv. 4): "God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born
under the law. "
To understand these two opposite expressions, freedom and
bondage, we must remember that every Christian is of two
natures, spiritual and physical. As to his soul, he is called a
carnal, old, and outward man. And because of this difference he
is spoken of in the Scriptures in directly opposite terms, as I
have just mentioned with respect to freedom and bondage.
Let us contemplate the inward, spiritual man, with the view
of finding out what qualities are essential for him that he may
really be and be known as a pious, free Christian. It is clear
that no outward thing may make him either free or pious, no
matter by what name you call that externality. For his piety
and liberty, or his wickedness and bondage, are neither physical
nor outward. Of what help is it to the soul that the body is
unfettered, vigorous, and healthy? That it eats, drinks, lives, as
it will? Again, of what hurt is it to the soul, that the body is
fettered, sick, and faint? that it hungers, thirsts, and suffers in
a way that it does not like? Of all these things not one reaches
the soul, to free or enslave it, to make it pious or evil.


## p. 9327 (#347) ###########################################

LUTHER
9327
Therefore it in no wise helps the soul, whether the body be
clothed in sacred garments or not; whether it be in churches.
and holy places or not; whether it be occupied with holy things
or not. Nor can bodily prayers, fasts, pilgrimages, or the doing
of all good works, although they might be wrought in and by
the body to eternity, be of any avail for the soul. It must be
something entirely different that brings and gives piety and lib-
erty to the soul. For all the above-mentioned parts, works, and
ways may in themselves be contained in and exercised by an
evil man, a dissembler, and a hypocrite. Further, by such meth-
ods nothing else than vain double-dealings could be produced.
Again, it does not hurt the soul to have the body wearing secu-
lar garments; to eat, drink, make pilgrimages in secular places;
to neglect prayers, and leave undone all the works which the
above-mentioned hypocrites do.
The soul has nothing else in heaven nor on earth whereby it
can live, become pious, free, and Christian, than the gospel,-
God's word preached by Christ, as he himself says (John xi. 25):
"I am the resurrection and the life;" and again (John xiv. 6):
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life;" also (Matthew
iv. 4): "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. " Therefore we must
be assured that the soul can do without everything else save the
Word of God; and that without the Word of God nothing can
help it. If however it has the Word, it needs naught else, but
it has sufficient in the Word's food: joy, peace, light, art, right-
eousness, truth, wisdom, liberty, and all good, in overflowing
measure.
In this sense we read in the Psalter, especially in Psalm xix. ,
that the prophet cares only for God's word; and in the Script-
ures, it is held to be the worst plague and anger of God should
he take his Word away from mankind; and again, no greater
mercy than to send his Word, as is written (Ps. cvii. ): "He
sendeth his Word, and healeth them, and delivereth them from
their destructions. " And Christ came for no other purpose than
to preach God's Word. Also all apostles, bishops, priests, and
the whole ministerial order are called and installed only for the
sake of the Word, although it is otherwise at present. But do
you ask, What is the Word, which bestows such great mercy,
and how shall I use it? I answer: It is nothing else than the
teaching of Christ, as contained in the gospel, which is meant to
―――――――


## p. 9328 (#348) ###########################################

9328
LUTHER
be and is constituted of such a nature that you hear your God
speaking to you; that all your life and works count for nothing
before God, but that you will have to perish eternally with all
that is in you.
Believing which, as is your duty, you must despair of your-
self and confess that the saying of Hosea is true: "O Israel,
thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help. "
But in order that you may escape out and from yourself and
from your doom, he places before you his dear Son Jesus Christ;
and has said to you through his living, comforting Word, that
you should with firm faith give yourself up entirely to him, and
unhesitatingly confide in him. Thus, for that very belief's sake
will all your sins be forgiven, all corruption will be overcome,
and you will be righteous, truthful, peaceful, pious, and all com-
mandments fulfilled; yes, free from all things, as St. Paul says
(Rom. i. ): "A righteous Christian lives only by his faith;" and
(Rom. x.